Allies Offer Little Haiti Invasion Aid : Diplomacy: Pledge of 266 soldiers by four Caribbean countries gives U.S. international participation. U.N. says attempt to persuade military to step aside failed.

The Clinton Administration won rhetorical backing from Caribbean republics Tuesday for an invasion of Haiti but came away virtually empty-handed in its attempt to sign up allies for military action to restore ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

“Our governments are equally united in their determination to take all necessary means to carry out the (U.N.) Security Council mandate to restore the democratic process in Haiti,” American and Caribbean officials said in a statement issued after a meeting in Kingston, Jamaica.

But only four of the 11 member countries of the Caribbean Community agreed to contribute troops, and they told reporters in the Jamaican capital that, together, they could supply only a single company--266 soldiers--to a U.S.-led invasion force expected to total 10,000 or more.

Although American officials say they still hope to resolve the Haiti issue peacefully, they suggested that an invasion is becoming increasingly likely.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali acknowledged failure Tuesday in a last-ditch attempt to persuade the military government of Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras to step aside in favor of Aristide, who was deposed in a bloody coup in September, 1991.

Boutros-Ghali informed the Security Council in a closed meeting that his special mission had failed and that he would do no more for now. “The initiative has not been successful,” he told reporters afterward.

The American government sent a high-ranking delegation, led by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, to Kingston to try to assure the United States of at least token international participation if it decides to go ahead with an invasion.

Talbott and Deutch are scheduled to return to Washington today after an overnight trip to the Dominican Republic to inspect the porous Dominican-Haitian border and to urge the authorities in Santo Domingo to crack down on cross-border smuggling.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola.

Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Belize agreed to contribute troops to an invasion force; Jamaican Foreign Minister Paul Robertson told a news conference that the total Caribbean contribution would be “a light company, approximately 266 troops.”

Robertson said Bahamas and Guyana were considering joining the force but had made no final decision.

Despite the tiny size of the Caribbean contribution, Talbott called the meeting “a watershed” because it guaranteed Washington at least some foreign participation. The four countries were the first to make a firm commitment to send troops.

“We hope the military dictators in Haiti will get the message,” the Associated Press quoted Talbott as saying.

Deutch said the Pentagon will begin at once to give the Caribbean contingent American logistic support.

“The time for action has arrived,” Deutch said. “There can be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the multinational force is going to Haiti.”

Those words seemed to predict an imminent invasion, but Deutch explained that a multinational army will be needed in Haiti in any event, either to invade and force out Cedras or to help maintain order if the military government gives way peacefully.

But American officials said that, with the failure of the U.N. effort, the chances of a peaceful resolution of the crisis are fast running out.

Boutros-Ghali had dispatched Rolf Knutsson, an aide, to meet with intermediaries in the Dominican Republic last week to find out if the Haitian officers would accept a high-level U.N. mission to discuss their departure and the return of Aristide, the winner of the only internationally certified free and fair election in the republic’s modern history.

But the intermediaries, said Alvaro de Soto, a senior political adviser to the secretary general, informed Knutsson that such a mission would be allowed to meet only with civilian officials installed by the military as a puppet government.

De Soto told reporters that the Haitians also proposed a far different agenda for a meeting. They wanted to discuss various issues but not their resignations.

Boutros-Ghali told reporters he will suspend his initiative unless he receives orders from the Security Council to do otherwise or he is informed of a “drastic change” in the attitude of Cedras.

Cedras had agreed to give up his command of the army under an agreement he and Aristide signed on Governors Island off the tip of Manhattan more than a year ago. But he later reneged on the deal.

After Boutros-Ghali reported to the council, British Ambassador David Hannay told reporters, “I think it’s deplorable and sad that they have rejected another opportunity to do this peacefully.”

In a statement read on behalf of the 15-member council, Russian Ambassador Yuli Vorontsov said the panel deplored “the rejection by the illegal de facto regime in Haiti of the initiative.”

“Once again,” he added, “the regime has discarded a possibility of peacefully implementing the Governors Island agreement and the relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”

The Security Council last month authorized the use of “all necessary means” to restore democracy to Haiti, giving the United States the authority to go ahead with an invasion if it chooses to take that step.

Kempster reported from Washington and Meisler from the United Nations.